Recently, I had a privilege to be at the Nigeria Police headquarters, ladies and gentlemen. So be an officer of the Nigeria force can be beautiful. I have seen police both men and women and for the first time, I had to take a proper and careful look at them. Despite all the negativity parading our Naija officers, I must say this time around, I kinda fall in love with them. Someone might say “haa…he had never had a bad moment(s) with them”. Well I do have handful of bad experiences in time past and even recently. Know this, that my views can be one sided with some level of biasness but then I am expressing them based on my few hour experience in their domain. Most of the time we get to hear about the NPF headquarter will be in the News, probably because it involves high profile cases. Starting from the moment I stepdown at Area 11 and crossing over to the Louis Edet building, you begin to have a sense of you entering a tight security zone. You mess up, you get dealt with, simple as that. So I waited patiently for my dear escort to lead me through for the purpose for which I came for, a smart young officer, probably the same age as I or even older than me pulled up beside me in his tushed ride. I popped into his car and off we go inside the headquarter. Seeing the siren of the environment was enchanting, beautifully trimmed flowers around but so many cars parked. One thing that got me more inquisitive was when my escort said, “he was not looking tiding” and his provost must not catch him. I looked at him again, in my mind, he was looking ok, not until I started looking at the other officers that walked pass and those standing by security doors, then I understood what he really was talking about. The Nigerian police officers at the Abuja headquarter are super clean, as in clean, you can hardly notice a hair strand on their faces and their police ladies had their hairs well packed as well. I just wonder why this feature of the force officers never never caught my attention. What my memories can only recall are tatted looking officers, unkempt and sometimes sickly appearance. I wondered why or maybe is it because it is the head base of all police force that facilitated such cleanliness? Not only that, I started observing their dressing (by the way I am a scientist, so I observe my environment). It is top notched. Well tuck in. It was then I saw they use a deep navy blue color band belt. I had always thought their belts was black in colour. At that point, I felt like having one of their uniform on. They were so attractive to behold. But on another thought, I began to wonder why such contrast in comparison to officers from my home and work based station. I can’t just begin to give pictures to this. I feel being an officer in Abuja is high life men…You need to see their sparkling, smooth and smooching skins. The Olopaa here, dey enjoy oo. Even my host was wearing a baby skin look. The coolness of the work environment is enticing. To be police officer go sweet you, again maybe it is Abuja effect which I can’t explain. Life is spectacularly good for these people. I used to think being an officer is like entering into suffering and miserable life, but now I do have a second thought. If it is this good in Abuja, I wonder what is happening with my state(s) and other states I have seen police officers. I was impressed with the building environment cleanliness which is good too and secured, maybe because it is Abuja. Something I also notice again were officers wearing mixed green police outfits. For example, there is black or green beret on either green top/trouser or black top/green trouser with green/black boots and red beret on green top/trouser. I had always thought the green colour is for the Nigeria Army. I see I am novice about our force and certainly many others as well. In fact I am statistically proclaiming that more than half of Nigeria population knows nothing about their police force except for the negative mirage that connote with them, bribery and other corrupt practices. The corruption song have clouded our minds that most of us never gave them a second thought. Their line of duty kind of work comes with high risk and yet most people get to condemn them because of the few bad eggs in the system. There is police brutality, corruption, bribery etc. all around the world. And certainly our cops are no exception but then for the sake of those truly serving this nation, we need to commend and pray for them. The little I have come to know about them now is pretty encouraging. You may ask, what little do I know and how did I get to know what I know? Well the answer to that is on their website. I least expected that NPF to have a website and social media platforms until I saw it on the office wall of my host’s secretary. So on returning back to my hotel, I took some hours to browse through their site and social media, I am pretty impressed. I can only hope that they continue to improve their usage and leverage it to further promote the good image of the force. Personally, right now, there is need for more to be done in terms of publicity awareness of what is obtainable from the force. In a population of about 7 million people, they have on the average of 20, 000 plus followers. There is work to be done to make their presence felt. Some of the tools to achieve this is already in use. With some creativity, the force can begin to sensitize the public more about who they are and what they do etc. The stories about exploits, human gestures should also be published on their social media pages. With certain support and marketing strategies, it would reach a large number of people and contribute to the promotion of the partnership between police officers and citizens. check it out. Citizens would also be interested in stories about what the daily work of police officers looks like with interesting videos. Social media has proven to be a useful means of communication in many crisis situations, and I hope that our police will use all the benefits of network communication. If someone was to ask me about our police force, I know little. In fact I know more about UK police than our Naija police which shouldn’t be. But I think they are already doing something about their public image but need more momentum (free consultation dey just in case). Surprisingly, NPF do have an app in google playstore. It was intriguing to see such. Hopefully I shall be trying it out soon. Optimistically, as I put this opinion to rest, a research collaboration together with the police force will be interesting, where we are shall be investigating “unseen individual” escaping any form of physical security checks at the headquarter or any other police stations and these “unseen individual” are all over the places. As my duty and skill requires as a “Scientific Police”, I investigate cases of “unseen individual”. It will be interesting to know what is present in the built environment of the NPF and quietly policing along with them.
Have fun with the interactive Naija map depicting NPC policing zones across the country.
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God bless our Naija police force.